My Weekend

[DonLisk]

Although I'm taking a vacation this coming week and had plans to make a road trip to a New England based pet shop to check them out, I decided to go Saturday and take the wife along for the ride.

We went to a shop in New Hampshire named Zoo Creatures, which is a retail store owned by a reptile breeding facility named New England Reptile Distributors (NERDS).

Upon arrival we were already impressed with the amount of cork rounds, backgrounds, and the shelves of substrates and other setup essentials that were right inside the doorway. We continued though aisles and aisles of enclosures with some of the coolest reptiles we ever saw. Not so much frogs, but snakes, lizards, and more snakes. They had plenty of spiders and centipedes too.

The only frogs on hand were some awesome Bumblebee Dart Frogs in orange strip and a single one in bright yellow bands. If I had the funds, a new Viv would have been packed into the car, and making a home in my living room with a pair of these beautiful little ones.

We were overwhelmed and very impressed with the staff and how well things were kept.
We also decided we had to do a tour of their breeding facility, which is charged for, but well worth it we found out.

We were on our own with two employees that led us into room after room of snakes and more snakes. some with price tags more than a new SUV.
We got to handle 15 foot long snakes (my wifes 1st experience ever even touching a snake never mind handling one), tiny snakes, and even had the employees taking out and handling a few cobras which made the wife jump a few times :-)
Some of my favorites were the amazingly colored ball pythons that had price tags from 10K to 45K dollars. Who buys these things at those prices I'll never know.

They had turtles, crocodiles, alligators, monitors, and just container after container of more snakes.
After we were down, we stood in awe at the great time and experience we had with well over an hour of one on one time with getting to touch, handle, and see some really amazing creatures.

I'll be heading back while on vacation this week without the wife, hoping not to return home with an empty wallet and looking for room for another habitat with those Bumblebee Darts :-)